She meets Melody, the new Chinese-American girl at school, and they become best friends. Pacey, the middle sister, hopes that this year she will find friendship and find her special talent and purpose in life. When the book opens, the family is celebrating the Chinese New Year and the Year of the Dog. This is exactly what I had been looking for in a book: the modern-day equivalent to those great old-fashioned family books like All-of-a-Kind Family and Betsy Tacy. Then I was grabbing a big stack of audiobooks at the library that I hoped would appeal to my seven and under crowd, and I picked up The Year of the Dog by Grace Lin. So I was grumping to myself, where are the Beverly Clearys, the Elizabeth Enrights: the folks writing books about ordinary families doing life together and getting into scrapes that usually turn out all right in the end, but doing it with humor and great writing too? My kids love these kinds of books. I have never really cared for scary books, and some of my kids are very sensitive about these kinds of things. There are just a lot more ghosts hanging around in kids' books lately. I've noticed it in the past few years as I've tried to read the Newbery-winning books. In her post Newbery/ Caldecott 2015: The Summer Predictions Edition at A Fuse #8 Production, Elizabeth Bird noticed a trend of doom and gloom in this year's children's books.
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